Monday, May 19, 2014

The Unvincible One Part II!

Part I of my coverage of Whirl focused on his Generation One figure. Now, let's look at his new Generations figure.

Everyone knows why Whirl got another figure - he's been an incredibly popular and vital member of the Lost Light crew since Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye launched a couple of years ago. And everyone knows that the Generations version of Whirl is nothing like the Whirl depicted in the comics and is more or less a faithful update of his Generation One figure, with a very little of his IDW version to show.

As you can tell, Whirl's head isn't as blocky as his G1 counterpart. There are some rounded angles to the shape. Perhaps the biggest thing taken from Alex Milne's design are the bird-like legs. They're different, and I rather like them. The arms are a little lanky, but the shoulders can push into the body, something I didn't figure out until I had already taken these pictures. You can read more about this feature at the great 'Til All Are Mine blog. Of course, this wouldn't be a proper update to G1 Whirl without a plethora of weaponry.

All of Whirl's weapons feature c-clips so they can be combined, or attached just about anywhere. I've decided that for now, Whirl will be displayed in a manner befitting his G1 figure.

Here's a profile shot of Whirl where you can see his armaments a bit better.

Unvincible x2!

Of course, there has to be the obligatory shot of G1 and Generations Whirl.

Whirls' helicopter mode is pretty fantastic, in my opinion. It's really evokes the Airwolf feel of the original. Keeping with the G1 theme, Generations whirl comes with a decal sheet. The instructions for the decal sheet are horrendous and led to me looking at my G1 Whirl to figure out a few details for placement. Hasbro really wanted to get this guy as close to G1 as possible. His canopy even opens.

Here's Whirl all gunned up. Again, weapon placement is up to the individual.

Two generations of Whirl, side by side, ready to take on some Decepticreeps.

I'm not entirely sure why, but Generations Whirl has been endowed with a third mode - Gerwalk. It's clever, but I've always felt that gerwalk worked better with jets. Just look at any Robotech fighter. Or, you know, Jetfire. I'm sure that the designers thought that it was a good idea, but I'd rather see this on the upcoming Generations Jetfire.

Even when the lackluster gerwalk mode, I'm happy with this figure. Sure, some of the joints are super tight, and the struts for the legs are razor thin and make me think that I'm going to break them at any moment, but Whirl is a very solid figure. I understand that there are stores out there with literally dozens of Whirls just sitting on their shelves. Why this is a shelf-warmer, I don't know, but everyone should grab one.